By Hannah Powling
The camera loves her, that’s clear. Lupita Nyong’o opens up a side to her in Elle UK‘s interview for their January 2016 issue that we feel like we know the actress a little more.
She discusses Star Wars (naturally), about her identity growing up and representation; and in quite powerful words to the magazine describes that she didn’t see other dark-skinned women in the media, which made her feel invisible.
“If you turn on the television and you are not represented on that television, you become invisible to yourself. And there was very little of myself that I saw on TV, or in the movies that I was watching, or in magazines that were lying around the salons or around the house. And so these are subconscious things. Yes, Western beauty standards are things that affect the entire world,” she explains. “And then what happens? You’re a society that doesn’t value darker skin.”
Take a look at the full interview here.
Apart from these photos making you want to go shopping right now; we’re also wanting her super lustrous, beaming skin! (Let us help you out with that one). Lupita is the perfect picture as she poses in this gorgeous shoot, and here are a few photos that we loved:
She eventually met a photographer through a mutual friend while out at a festival in a local town square. He asked to photograph her. ‘And nobody had ever asked that of me before. So of course I was like, “Ah, OK.” And I went a few weeks later and was photographed by him.’
Lupita talks about her first photoshoot with a photographer she met through a mutual friend, ‘There are many ways a photographer can pump up your spirits. And that was so therapeutic. I really wish every girl could have that opportunity to have that experience. So that was the first time I felt beautiful, that I felt worth a photograph.” 
“I know being an African woman on a Hollywood platform is not something you see every day, and I feel how special that is and I respect it. And I signed up for it. I wouldn’t trade it” she says. “I definitely don’t think it should be left up to me to represent an entire continent in this industry. And that’s not the case. But someone has to go first, and if one of those people is me, then yes please.”
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